A Brief History Lesson

London National Museum

Today Vin and I started the day like most of the others we have been here with coffee and a pastry at a cafe. One thing that is cool here is that most of the cafes and restaurants have tables outside, so it is nice to have a coffee in the morning and kind of just people watch for a little while. There are also a lot of different stands on the streets. They sell anything from fresh breads and pastries, to fruits, vegetables and seafood.

Then we ventured to the London National Museum and saw all kind of interesting artifacts from ancient cultures like the Egyptians (Meyer, you would have loved it), Japanese, Greeks and Romans. They actually have the Rosetta Stone here, which was definitely something to see. After studying it for a little bit I can read hieroglyphics now, haha. We walked around in there for a couple hours and saw some pretty cool exhibits. One funny thing was, they have an exhibit on the history of money and there was an old cash register that was made in Dayton, OH. That was about all for the day, tonight I think we are going to get some Indian food for dinner and go out to some pubs. It should be fun seeing as how I have been over for almost a week and haven't been inside a proper pub yet (the oldest one when we were in Nottingham doesn't count that was at like three or four in the afternoon). That's all for now enjoy some of the pictures from the museum!

Rosetta Stone

A statue and a sarcophagus

Yeah that's a mummy in there

The cash register from Dayton

Inside the museum

(blue skies a rare sight in london)

London Bridge is Falling Down

London Tower Bridge

Yesterday Vinnie and I did little more exploring in London. We went to London Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral and London Tower. I thought the bridge pictured above was London Bridge but it is actually London Tower Bridge. London Bridge is really nothing to see at all it is just like any other standard bridge over a river. However from London Bridge we walked to St. Paul's cathedral which was pretty cool. We didn't pay to walk around inside of it, it was like 20 quid to do that so we just looked around the entrance a little bit and started walking over to London Tower. London Tower was actually cool. It isn't much of a tower but what you would think a castle looks like when you think of one. It was originally built in like the 1100's and has been destroyed and rebuilt a few times since then, it is just crazy to think of something being that old and still being around. After that we crossed the tower bridge and then made our way back to Krieger's place.

I had my spaghetti sauce cooking all day and was hoping that it would turn out edible. I was sure if I was using the right kind of sauce because what I bought was called sieved tomato's, not tomato sauce. It looked the same as tomato sauce and smelled pretty similar, but I wasn't positive. I used italian sauce instead of tomato sauce one time and dumped the entire pot down the drain because it was so bad, so I was a little nervous about using something different again. To my surprise it came out much better than expected and could have held up to what I would normally cook in the states. So Vin, Krieger, Joe, Patrick and I had a great dinner and then we had cheesecake for dessert. It was great and they all said they needed a meal like that because a hearty, good quality Italian meal is not easy to come by in the UK, which made me feel good.

After being in London for a little while, it really doesn't feel that much like a foreign city, it feels like an extension of New York City. Sure, there are different names for most things, accents and they drive on the other side of the road, but it just doesn't feel that much different from American cities I have been to. I'm not too sure what a foreign city should feel like, but I don't think London has it. Don't get me wrong, London is a great place but just not as different as I would have expected, which is why it is making me even more excited to travel into Europe. This afternoon Vin and I just went to a travel agency and booked a trip by train to Paris and Venice. We are leaving London Sunday morning for Paris, and staying there Sunday and all day Monday. Then we are leaving Paris Monday night and traveling through the night to Venice and getting there Tuesday morning. We are staying in Venice until Sunday then back to London on Monday. So until Sunday we will be doing some more exploring of London, I'm sure I will keep whoever is reading this updated so stay tuned for more posts, and here are some more pictures from yesterday, enjoy.

Monument for the Great Fire of London 1666 (built 1671-1677)

Some of St. Paul's Cathedral

Inside the cathedral (you weren't allowed cameras but I snuck these)

London Tower and Bridge

The Sheriff of Nottingham

Nottingham Proper

Monday brought on a trip to Nottingham. We caught a bus and it was going to take a little over three hours too get there. At the bus station I got myself a breakfast sandwich, or bap. It was a bacon and sausage bap and it was awesome, it had a thick coil of sausage and a slab of bacon on it. The bus ride wasn't too bad, I'm still getting used to the five hour time change so I pretty much slept the whole way to Nottingham.

We got to Nottingham around two or three and walked around there for a while. We visited the Nottingham castle, which we didn't get to see a whole lot of because it is like 15 or 20 pounds to actually walk around the grounds of it. I guess when I think of a castle I think of huge towers, and turrets and things of that nature but this pretty much looked like a smaller version of Buckingham Palace. It was cool but not as castley as I would have hoped. Outside of the castle wall is a statue of Robin Hood, which we got some pictures next to, and further down the wall is a bar that crusaders would stop at on the way to Jerusalem. It claims to be the oldest pub in England and was established in 1189 AD. It is kind of hard to believe a place could be around for so long.

After that we headed back to Vinnie's dorm in Beeston, kind of a suburb of Nottingham. We walked around Nottingham University's campus and watched a little bit of a pick up soccer game. Then we got pizza and fries, or chips as they are called here, and ate dinner in the tv room of Vin's dorm. The pizza was actually really good, which was a surprise, I wouldn't have expected to get good pizza in England. The tv here is wierd and kind of hard to describe. We watched some of Schindler's List and The Bourne Ultimatum, both movies I have seen at home. Here, however, on their tvs the movie looked more fake somehow, like they were cheaply made or something. Probably not a good explanation but it was wierd nonetheless.

I got to sleep on Vinnie's floor with a pillow made of by bag and t-shirts, so it wasn't the greatest night of sleep I had, but oh well.

Tuesday we got some coffee and breakfast at a cafe in Beeston then took another bus ride back to London. We didn't do a whole lot yesterday, kind of just walked around a little around Michael's place, and then I cooked dinner for myself, Vin and Joe. I made aglio and olio with anchovies, it was pretty good but not as good as I could have made it, but they both enjoyed it.

Today I am making spaghetti it was hard to find tomato sauce, but I think I did, we will see how it turns out. Michael and his brother are back from Barcelona, so we will all have dinner together tonight.

Vin just made me and him a grilled cheese for lunch and we are about to head out and check out London Bridge, the Globe Theatre and St. Paul's Cathedral. I'm sure I will have plenty of pictures and I'll let you know how it was, for now check some of the pictures from Nottingham.

Gate of Nottingham Castle

Part of the Castle

Some of the castle grounds

The oldest pub in England

The view from Vin's Dorm

Beeston

The Other Side of the Pond

View out the window of my plane

I have been wanting to start writing a blog for a little while now and I figured there probably isn't a better time to start than while traveling through Europe. I'll try to update as much as possible with what I'm doing and as many pictures as i can.

I started my journey Saturday the 25th with a flight from pittsburgh to cleveland and then cleveland to london heathrow. I never have traveled alone before so I was nervous about that plus I was going to another country which made it a little more nerve wracking. I actually thought the flight between pittsburgh and cleveland was worse than the one to london. The shorter flight was on tiny plane that had propellers, not normal airplane engines so it was pretty bumpy, which I don't enjoy very much. However, I did make it to london in one piece, and faster than expected, about an hour early because we had strong tail winds. Now I was just hoping to see my bag come out of the baggage claim hole and make it through customs without too much trouble. My bag did eventually come out and the customs person wasn't too bad, no weird questions or too much pestering me of what I was going to be doing while in England. I did declare that I brought over seven cans of chew, which I really don't think they new how much it was because they told me to not bring so much next time, but it really is not much at all and I'm not very sure if it will even last me the whole time here.

After all that I got my stamp on my passport, very easily met Vinnie outside of customs, and we took a train to London, where we would be staying with krieger. He is not there, he is in Barcelona with his brother, but his room mate Joe is and he seems pretty cool. The place is really nice, five floors, we are pretty lucky to have a place like this stay in while we are in London. After dropping my stuff off there, me, Vin and Joe got some breakfast around the corner.

After that Joe went back to the house and me and Vin ventured into London Center, the main part of london. This whole first day I was kind of in a fog, being that I didn't get more than a couple hours of sleep since I was traveling all day and night for the previous 24 hours or so. It was really cool though, we came out of the underground right by big ben and the parliament house, then went to piccadilly circus, sort of the times square of London and also went and saw Buckingham Palace (which was not as impressive as I would have thought).

After all that we went back to where we are staying and got some dinner, at a burger place. I got the barbecue burger, which was actually more like a chili burger (i don't think they really understand barbeque sauce), but it was good. For dessert we got a mcflurry from McDonald's, I guess the McFlurry machines work in this country.

After all that with the time change and not much sleep over the past two days it was about time for bed. Our plan for day two was taking a bus back to Nottingham for the night to check out where Vin had been living and check him out of his dorm room.

Me and Vin at Big Ben

In front of Parliament House

Piccadilly Circus

Buckingham Palace